ENBRIDGE PIPELINES

Enbridge is a Canadian energy company that controls Enbridge Energy Partners LP, headquartered in Houston TX. This is the company that OWNS the pipelines in the United States BUT it owns Enbridge Energy Management (EEQ), a publicly traded limited liability company to manage the business and affairs of the Partnership. Try to figure out who pays the bill when something breaks! See http://www.enbridge.com/ and http://www.enbridgepartners.com/ if you are curious about these two firms and their corporate structures and relationships.

But I digress!

Pipelines: Enbridge owns and/or operates pipelines in both Canada and the United States. They also own or operate natural gas pipelines from offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico to points inland from the Gulf Coast.

Enbridge currently distributes "dilbit" (diluted bitumen - see TAR SANDS 101) from the Canadian tar sands to refineries in Wisconsin, Canada and the U.S. Gulf Coast, through a network of pipelines transporting liquid petroleum products, although to refer to the product of the tar sands as "liquid" is stretching the envelope a bit!

From Wisconsin's perspective, the most important part of this network is Line 61, which runs from Superior to northern Illinois and thence to Oklahoma and the Gulf. This pipeline is being "expanded" by the addition of higher pressure pumps in 2014 and my additional pumping stations in 2015. See THIS LINK for Enbridge's informational handout and THIS LINK for a map showing the pipeline route with current pumping station locations. The below graphic shows the pipeline's APPROXIMATE route across northeastern Dane County!

This is a GREAT new viseo from the Grassroots Pipeline Awareness group on YouTube! CLICK HERE.

Also see 350.org-MADISON's PIPELINE page for a really cool interactive map that walks you through the pipeline route (though I disagree with their description of some of the pump stations as "proposed"). [I = Karen Edson]

Enbridge also has plans to build a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to the Canadian Pacific Coast, called the "Northern Gateway." This new website is designed to "sell" this project to British Columbia First Nations (who have overwhelmingly rejected it in the past) and Canadian and United States environmental groups, who see the expansion of tar sands marketing as having a disastrous impact on global warming. Visit NORTHERN GATEWAY PROJECT for a really slick selling job!

If you to slog through Enbridge's PR website, below is the Northern Gateway project in a thumbnail: